If you’re new to (or just about to enter) War Dust, the massive 32 vs 32 player FPS by Stand Out: VR Battle Royale developer Raptor Lab, you might be thrown off by some things that aren’t immediately obvious. That said, War Dust is very simple in its current early access state despite a few non-intuitive elements to basic gameplay, which aren’t entirely spelled out for you as a new player.

You could always ask the other players in your squad for advice, but I’ve gone ahead and listed out some of the essential things you should know how to do in War Dust before you can expect to start dominating the enemy team.

Choose the Right Class

Each of War Dust’s 4 unique classes are varied in such a way that you’ll have a pretty different experience with each one.

Assault – Comes with your standard assault rifle, handgun and grenade combo. Extremely versatile and probably best for new players to start with.
Engineer – Has a rocket launcher and a handgun. The rocket launcher automatically reloads over time, and the initial one you get has a built-in target lock feature which you can use to take down helicopters and tanks
Support – Gets a submachine gun, a medi-kit, a placeable barricade and a grenade. Take note that this is the only class that can heal other players.
Sniper – Gets a sniper rifle, a handgun, and a smoke grenade.

Customize Your Loadout

You can slowly unlock additional tools and toys for each class as you gain XP and level them up. However, you do start off with a single additional option for both the Assault and the Support classes that offer you a very small sense of variation but also help you out in a big way.

The first thing you should do before playing either class is select the Red Dot sight as a default sight option. It makes shooting infinitely easier at the very beginning of your experience in War Dust and should pave the way to help you gain XP much faster.

Beyond that, there really isn’t much customization happening at the very beginning of the game. As you progress, and as the game receives more updates, that should hopefully change.

Spawn on Your Squadmates

War Dust is the type of game where you will ultimately spend the most time running around with your squad across its super large maps, jumping from point to point and defending or manning vehicles against members of the other team.

Spawning on your squadmates isn’t only a great way to give them a little bit of XP, it’s also pivotal for sticking together with your squad. If you haven’t played this type of large-scale conquest game before, squads are your lifeline and you’ll find it much simpler to succeed if you each work together to hone your unique abilities.

You Can Dual Wield

This isn’t so much a tip, as it is something you might want to be aware of for tight situations. Off the bat, you’ll want to aim down your sights as often

I drove 125 miles to K1 Speed in the Los Angeles area coasting at 70 miles per hour most of the way. Now I’m looking at one of K1’s karts on a real-world race track. The seat is low to the ground and I sit down, stretching out my legs on either side of the vehicle and wondering if traditional driving experience will translate.

The kart features a temporary rigging to attach a computer and Oculus Rift VR headset. The speed of the kart is remotely adjustable by the system Master of Shapes is demonstrating. As part of this rigging, lights effectively broadcast the kart’s position to cameras overhead spanning the length of the winding track. There’s even a button on the wheel that could deliver one of the world’s first mixed reality versions of something like Mario Kart.

Sure, it is amazing to wear a VR headset so you can sit in Mushroom Kingdom while seated on a real-world motion platform. But that’s a different caliber of experience from the one I’m testing, which will move my body through the real world in an accurate feedback loop with the way I push the pedals and turn the wheel. It is similar to the “mixed reality” experience we saw in the Oculus Arena at the most recent Oculus Connect VR developer’s conference, which incorporated real-world mapping. Except this time I’ll be moving through real space in a vehicle under my control.

Which brings me back to that button on the wheel — the one that “could deliver one of the world’s first mixed reality versions of something like Mario Kart.” Representatives from Master of Shapes told me not to push the button. They were explicit about it before I got in the kart. The button was intended entirely for development purposes at the moment I sat down.

One day there could be races here at K1 where a kid too young to drive a kart on their own could grab a gamepad and log into the same race as their elder sibling out on the actual “speedway.” One day that button on the wheel could launch a virtual weapon to slow down another player’s kart.

I press down on the pedal and…

Not long after the video above ends there’s a hard left turn and, in my growing confidence blindfolded to the real world, I move my hands into a new position. I should remind you again they told me not to push the button. In fact, they even warned me what would happen if I did. The virtual world would rotate 90 degrees off the physical barriers of the real world.

“Oh ok,” I thought at the time. “That’s bad. Don’t touch the button. Now let me drive the thing.”

So I’m hurtling around that corner and suddenly the world snaps into a new position. In front of my eyes now, directly ahead, is the railing of the virtual track. I panic and can’t remember which foot to use to brake the kart.

Was Crytek’s The Climb just not dangerous enough for you? Clambering up to the top of a mountain with your own two hands was just a little too easy? Then Don’t Look Down might just be for you.

This new Rift and Vive game from developer Catapult Games is set to take the climbing-based locomotion mechanic that works so well in VR (see Climbey and To The Top for more proof) in an entirely different direction. You’re still climbing a mountain, but this time you’ll have devious obstacles like spikey drones, cannon fire and handholds that turn into lava (!). Check out the gameplay in the trailer below, complete with an applause-worthy musical performance.

It might not have the graphical splendor of The Climb but we think Don’t Look Down genuinely looks like a lot of fun. It reminds us of a great little game from last year called The Tower in which you dodged obstacles as a conveyor belt took you further up an enormous castle. We’ll be interested to see how much content the full version of Don’t Look Down will offer in comparison to that.

You’ll get to try Don’t Look Down for yourself on Friday when a beta version launches on Itch.io. The full game is currently planned to release in March 2019 on Steam and Oculus Home.

Here’s an early festive treat for the anti-Scrooges among us; NextVR is going to be streaming the Moscow Ballet’s Great Russian Nutcracker in VR later today.

The show will be airing via the NextVR app and Oculus Venues at 7pm ET/4pm PT on both Oculus Go and Gear VR. You’ll get a front-row experience with 3D video streamed like from the Miller Auditorium in Kalamazoo (that’s in Michigan, not Russia, I had to look it up).

Following the livestram you’ll also be able to watch a recorded version on other headsets like Rift, PSVR and Windows VR, 30 days from today. Sadly we can’t move Christmas back another few days to keep you in the mood but, hey, it’s better than nothing isn’t it?

Facebook has announced today that its 2019 iteration of its yearly conference will take place on April 30th and May 1st. Facebook is the company behind the Oculus VR platform and headsets.

Oculus Quest will be the company’s second all-in-one standalone VR headset. Its first, Oculus Go, was released earlier this year at F8 2018.

Oculus has said that Quest will launch in “Spring 2019”. Given that F8 2019 will fall within spring, and that Oculus Go was launched at the last F8, it seems fairly likely that this is when Quest will be launched.

Go’s release was not preceded by any preorders or prior announcement. The headset simply had an “early 2018” release window, and was launched at F8. If Quest receives the same treatment, we likely won’t hear anything concrete until then either.

What we do expect before then however is a launch games lineup event. When Quest was announced in September, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stressed that it would launch with other 50 titles. We haven’t seen the majority of those officially listed yet.

Facebook has been awarded a patent for a head mounted display (HMD) which combines a large low resolution display and small high resolution display projected to where the user’s eye is pointed to achieve ‘retinal’ resolution.

‘Retinal’ or “retina” is a term often used to describe angular resolution which at least matches that of the center of the human eye. Facebook is the company behind the Oculus brand of VR headsets and services. Originally purchased as a startup in 2014, Oculus is now a division of Facebook. This patent’s inventors are all listed as residents of Washington state, suggesting this idea comes from Facebook Reality Lab which has its main office there.

Two Displays Per Eye, Merged

The patent describes a headset which has eye tracking-driven foveated rendering. For those unfamiliar, foveated rendering is a process which renders most of the view into a virtual world at lower resolution except for the exact area directly in front of where the user’s eye is pointed. That area in front of the eye — where humans perceive the greatest detail — is rendered at a higher resolution.

With this patent, instead of the image being sent to one display per eye, as in most headsets, the high resolution area is instead sent to a a second much smaller display called the ‘inset display’. A steerable mirror and optical combiner then project this display into the lens, at the position the user’s eye is pointed. Low resolution parts of the virtual world — parts not directly in front of the eyeball — go to the main display and are magnified directly by the lens.

The result would a display that combines these low and high-resolution panels to provide an experience that roughly matches the level of detail that the human eye can resolve. If the eye tracking is good enough, the user would not even notice that the headset has variable resolution.

Isn’t This Varjo?

This patent may sound familiar if you’ve heard of the Finland-based company Varjo. Varjo’s current prototype also features an inset and background display, but the high resolution area is locked to the center of the display — it does not yet adapt to eye position. But Varjo’s end goal is to build a headset that sounds surprisingly similar to what Facebook describe in this patent, steering the display with mirrors.

Varjo has also been awarded a patent for this technique. Facebook applied for its patent before Varjo’s, but Varjo’s was granted before Facebook’s. It is not clear how much these techniques differ from one another.

The ‘Inset’ Microdisplay

One diagram in the patent’s supporting documents mentions the resolution and potential supplier of the inset display. It is marked as a 1920×1200 microdisplay from eMagin. This is likely the eMagin WUXGA, which eMagin claims is the highest resolution production OLED microdisplay.

OLED microdisplays use a more costly production method compared to regular OLED panels used in VR today, but are physically much smaller and consume less power. The peripheral display’s exact resolution is not listed, but is described “low compared to

Award-winning director creates voice-activated AR experience that boosts a child’s confidence. At first glance, Little Red the Inventor is a rather sweet-looking little AR app where you get to help out Little Red Riding Hood as she tries to make her way through the forest, out of trouble, and ultimately to her grandma’s house. But

VR is giving prospective students a glimpse of college life without having to travel across the country. When deciding which colleges to apply to, it is hard to know which campus will be the right environment for you if you aren’t able to explore the classrooms and quad. However, thanks to VR tour companies like